Briefly explain the concept of racial microaggressions with an example.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Old-fashioned, obvious, overt racism has become rare in the United States. It has been replaced by more subtle forms of prejudiced attitudes and behaviors. Racial microaggressions are subtle insults directed at people of color, often done nonconsciously. Members of ethnic minorities in the U.S. experience them frequently, and they can be a source of stress. For example, consider the following scenario in which a White professor provides a lecture on Greco-Roman contributions to the history of psychology. An African American student seems frustrated and says that the history of psychology is ethnocentric and Eurocentric, and that it left out contributions from African, Asian, and Latin American cultures and psychologies. The professor responds by asking the student to calm down and implies that American psychology is the norm and it influences other societies, with no consideration of the possibility that other societies might have developed psychological concepts and principles on their own. Telling a person to calm down is often an expression of dominance that invalidates the legitimacy of the person's feelings. The subtlety and ambiguity of microaggressions makes them even more difficult to deal with.